Contact
Contributions to Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
View all of 's posts on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.
When Queer Lovers Collaborate: The Rough Edges of Smooth Knowledge in a Diabetes Research Project
Connect1d is a Canadian organization that was founded to involve the experiences of type 1 diabetics in research about type 1 diabetes. Its website states, “Many of us have lived experience with T1D, and we want to work closely with the diabetes community to co-create what the future of living with T1D looks like” (accessed Sept 15, 2025). It sounds good, so then, what is wrong with this image (see below)? (more…) (read more...)
Behind the Monster: Reading Frankenstein as a Warning Against Isolation, Greed, and Hubris in 21st Century Agritech
In a 1992 New York Times op-ed, Paul Lewis denounced the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to exempt genetically engineered crops from case-by-case review. He likened modern agricultural scientists to the scientist Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s novel and introduced the now famous term “Frankenfoods.” Frankenfoods invokes Shelley’s Frankenstein to capture public unease about the unforeseen consequences of consuming genetically modified foods. The term soon drew scrutiny from proponents of the technology, including industry-sponsored front groups, agricultural businesses (also referred to as agribusiness), respected journalists, plant geneticists, and scientific organizations. Citing evidence of the proven safety of consuming genetically modified foods, they rejected the label as a reactionary, scientifically inaccurate, and fear-mongering indictment of a new and thus, unfamiliar, technology. (more…) (read more...)
Necrovitality and Porous Exclusions: On Dying amidst Chemical Vitalities
Note: This post contains images of skin wounds. If you are dermatophobic, read/view at your own discretion. You may instead listen to the post. An entry into the world through the pore urges us to see the chemical and material world as vital, volatile, viscous, transcorporeal–some of the topics addressed in the Platypus series, “Witnessing the porous world.” Jane Bennett, in describing and diving into the “life of metal,” begins by asking, “can nonorganic bodies also have a life? Can materiality itself be vital?” (2009, 53). Life, for Bennett as they converse with philosophers Deleuze and Nietzsche is, “a-subjective” and “impersonal” (54). Bennett’s effort to “avoid anthropocentrism and biocentrism”, leads them to “material” and “metallic vitality” that is imminent from “vacancies,” “holes,” and “cracks” that render material “porous” (59-61). (more…) (read more...)